New College Trend: Trying Homelessness

The story told by the disheveled, grubby young couple wrapped in blankets as they wandered around downtown Atlanta in mid-March was a sad one:

They had come to the city to look for work. They planned to stay with a friend, but the friend wasn`t home. They didn`t have any money or anywhere else to go. They were on the streets.

It was a sad story, but that`s all it was. A story.

Meridee Watt and Sean Madison weren`t homeless. They were students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign pretending to be homeless for spring break.

They were urban plungers.

``Plunging`` is the latest trend among people who want to take their social conscience for a walk on the wild side. No equipment required, except maybe some old clothes and a pocketful of change.

Plungers spend a few days among the homeless as part of them. They sleep in shelters or on the ground, rummage through garbage cans for food, apply for public aid and beg for money.

Some do it as part of an organized program, complete with real homeless people as tour guides and an accompanying stint volunteering at social service agencies. Others hit the streets on their own.

The idea is to learn about homelessness by living it.

Whether it works is a matter of debate.

Plungers say they gain insight into the issue they couldn`t get any other way. Most speak with a fervor akin to that of David Hatfield, a senior at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), who plunged for 48 hours in Washington, D.C., this spring.

``There is an immense feeling of isolation and loneliness because you`re uncoupled from the things people secure themselves with in life,`` said Hatfield, 22. ``The whole problem just blossomed in front of me.``

But others, including a number of activists for the homeless, argue that plunging is just self-righteous slumming.

``People think it`s a novel concept to experience homelessness by going out on the street and pretending to be homeless,`` said Brian Hopkins, spokesman for the Illinois Coalition to End Homelessness. ``Just put on dirty clothes-and if you`re a guy, don`t shave for a few days-and there you are, instant homelessness. But we think it`s dishonest.

``There`s a level of despair you just can`t simulate when you know you`re going to go home afterward.``

Exploring the underside of life by pretending to be one of its members is not a new concept. Author George Orwell`s adventures with the downtrodden provided the basis for his book ``Down and Out in Paris and London.`` John Griffin wrote about racism in ``Black Like Me`` after disguising himself as a black. And many students of the `60s recall their unfunded trips to ``find themselves`` in hitchhiking, crash pads and panhandling.

More recently, the legions of people who have taken to the streets in the name of enlightenment range from actor Martin Sheen to former Nashville Mayor Bill Boner and Chicago news anchor Walter Jacobson.

Organized plunges have become more popular on college campuses as general interest in social issues and volunteerism has grown. They are most often done as part of alternative spring break programs, in which students trade the traditional week of hedonism for volunteer work. The University YMCA at the U. of I. sponsored nine such programs this year, including the ``homeless trip`` to Atlanta.

Michael Magevney, co-director of Break Away, a national clearinghouse for those programs based at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, estimates that at least 5,000 students took part in some type of alternative spring break program in 1992.

In the past two years, several hundred students have gone through urban plunges arranged by Michael Stoops, field coordinator of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington and the closest thing to a guru that plunging has. (He apparently even originated the term ``urban plunge,``

although he borrowed it from another group that offered a ``rural plunge``

weekend working with migrant workers.)

``It`s better than doing a damn term paper or reading books,`` said Stoops, who has himself spent up to five months living on the streets. ``Even if you`re volunteering in a soup kitchen, the volunteers are behind the counters and all the other people are on the other side, but when you do a plunge, you`re on the same level.``

To help plungers reach that level, Stoops gives them just 25 cents apiece to live on and encourages them to beg, ``dumpster dive`` for food and attempt to use a bathroom in a fancy restaurant to enhance the psychological reality of the experience.

``You get to see how the world sees you as a homeless person,`` Stoops said. ``Having people say no to you or walk past you like you`re not there when you ask them for money is a mind-awakening experience.``